Soccer in Iraq: Another Field for Argument

The suspension of Iraq’s soccer team from international competition illustrates the capacity of past divisions to bedevil an immature political present.

ROD NORDLAND and SA’AD AL-IZZI

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s national soccer team has certainly endured hardship. Saddam Hussein had players beaten after losses. And the war that deposed him forced them into exile, after extremists started killing sports figures. Their first game at home in years was just this summer — against the Palestinians, the only team willing to come here during a war.

Through all that, the team continued to compete internationally. Now that may be at an end, at least for a time. The International Federation of Association Football, known by its French acronym, FIFA, suspended Iraq’s soccer team on Friday, charging the government with interference in the affairs of the board that oversees the national team.

This is not so much a story about sports as a parable of life in Iraq — another example of the inability of Iraqis to settle their differences. Although the controversy is not nearly as important as the continuing wrangling that is delaying national elections, it has its own poignancy. In fractious Iraq, soccer has always been one thing that traversed its sectarian and political divides.

On the face of it, the conflict is reminiscent of the old joke about the politics of academia — so vicious because so little is at stake. It started when the Iraqi Football Association said it was too dangerous to hold elections in Iraq for its governing board, and FIFA granted it an extension. The government wanted elections immediately, and disbanded the local association, leading to the FIFA suspension.

The dispute illustrates the continued capacity of the political divisions of the past to bedevil an immature political present. Some Iraqi officials complain that the football association is still tainted by its old relationship with one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday, who once ruled Iraqi sports with a whip hand and a foul temper.

The disagreement is also about how Iraq’s leaders want their country to be perceived globally. It is hard to persuade investors to spend their money here if even the country’s football association declares it too dangerous to hold its elections here.

Iraq’s soccer team, like the country, has huge natural resources that are greatly underexploited. This year the team failed to qualify for the World Cup, even after investing in a prominent new Serbian coach, Bora Milutinovic, who previously took five other teams to the World Cup, including the United States team.

Yet during some of the darkest days of the war, in 2007, the Iraqi team won the prestigious Asian Cup, earning the nickname the Lions of Mesopotamia. That victory provoked a bacchanal of celebratory gunfire that sent the American military into high alert, until it realized the gunfire was not some Tet-style offensive by the insurgents.

Soccer is so beloved here that even Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which claims ties to Osama bin Laden’s group, has not dared to emulate Mr. bin Laden’s theologically based contempt for the game. Matches in Iraq are one of the few types of public gatherings that have never become a target for suicide bombers.

Younis Mahmoud, the team’s star center forward, is a Sunni from the disputed province of Kirkuk, where Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds are still in a virtual state of war. With a tattooed map of Iraq on his left arm and an aggressive, unstoppable style of attack that has earned him the nickname “the butcher,” Mr. Mahmoud is a hero to all Iraqis (even though, like the leaders of the football association, he refused in recent years to come back to Iraq to live out of fear for his life).

The passion of Iraqi fans runs high even by international soccer standards. Earlier this year, in Hilla, south of Baghdad, the goalie of the winning team in a local match was killed by a policeman — not out of anger, it turned out. In his excitement, the officer lost control of his gun.

At the center of the controversy with soccer’s worldwide governing body is Hussein Saeed, who heads the Iraqi Football Association, from his base in Amman, Jordan, or, say some, from London.

Mr. Saeed, a popular former team captain, was active in the football association when sports in Iraq were run by Uday Hussein, who was killed by the Americans in 2003.

Mr. Saeed’s critics say that made him an accessory to the torture of sports figures; his supporters say that, like all of Iraq’s athletes, he had no option but to endure the abuse.

Mr. Saeed dismisses the accusations. “They are all lies and fabrications,” he said in an interview last week. “These people should not use terroristic methods against the athletes.”

He also disputes government complaints that the football association has remained in exile. He said the group’s leaders regularly visited Kurdistan in the north and Babil Province in the south, both safe compared to Baghdad.

No one blames the Iraqi soccer team for these disputes.

After the team’s Asian Cup victory, government officials showered it with presents, including diplomatic passports and gifts of $10,000, given out by the prime minister to each player. The team’s poor showing this year, though, made it easier politically for the government to move against the football association, which controls the team and its finances.

During the days of Uday Hussein’s stranglehold on Iraqi sports, “There was lots of psychological pressure on the players, which was really effective,” said a former soccer player, Ahmed Radhi, who heads the Sports and Youth Committee in Parliament. “Now the players suffer from the same pressure due to the interference of politicians, so nothing much has changed.”

The soccer season is currently in a three-month hiatus, and Sameer Sadeq al Mosawy, an officer of the government-supported Iraqi Olympic Committee, the group that disbanded the Iraqi soccer association, said he expected the country to successfully appeal the suspension by FIFA before the next match. “We hope we can come out of this fight without any losers,” he said.

Mr. Mosawy, a former competitor in judo, denied that the actions of his committee, which oversees all of Iraq’s sporting federations, had anything to do with politics or anyone’s past deeds. “This is democracy,” he said in an interview on Thursday.

That may be so, said Abdul Qadir Zainal, a former Iraqi soccer player turned sports commentator, but such democracy does not always make for a beautiful game.

“In the last 35 years of Iraqi football, we never had a problem this serious,” Mr. Zainal said, shrugging off the infamies of Uday Hussein. “Now I really fear for the future of Iraqi football.”

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